Armenian/Turkish meat pies

This is my version of the Armenian meat pies I used to get in Burj Hammoud (the Armenian neighborhood) in Beirut. A quick and easy version; I used refrigerated biscuits for the dough instead of making my own (laziness) and it worked great. The most time-consuming part is getting the meat mixture ready. These bake in no more than 7 minutes or so in a hot oven.

Armenian/Turkish meat pies

Joumana Accad Mediterranean, Middle Eastern June 16, 2020 Main Dish, Mezze/Appetizers, Pastries/Breads, Armenian, savory pie, Turkish, hand pies, lahmajoon, tagged,

4-6 servings

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 5-10 minutes

Ingredients

1 lb ground lamb

1 cup chopped onion 

1 cup chopped parsley

1 cup chopped tomatoes

1 Tbsp red pepper paste

1 Tbsp Tabasco or chili sauce 

Salt, Black pepper

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 lemons or limes, quartered 

1 box refrigerated biscuits (uncooked dough, pre-cut)

Oil to grease the pans

 

Instructions

1. Mix the meat in a bowl with the onion, parsley, tomato, red pepper paste, chili sauce and spices. 

2. Flatten each biscuit or roll it out as thin as possible; spread the meat mixture on the biscuit leaving 1/2" border empty. 

3. Bake on a greased cookie sheet in a preheated 440F oven for about 7 minutes or until the crust is golden. Serve immediately with quartered limes or lemons to squeeze on the meat topping. 

 

 

Recipe Notes

These can be frozen unbaked or baked for a couple of weeks. 

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Comments

2 Comments  •  Comments Feed

1. 

   Reply

   Doc says:

   I need a few hints. It sounds like I should expect to use up the pound of lamb when I have finished making meat pies from a box of biscuits. But how much does a box of biscuits weigh and how many biscuits are there in the box. I don’t understand what the ratio of meat to dough should be. The photo seems to show a pie that is about 10″ in diameter (judging the lime to be ~2″ in across) but that is not a single biscuit’s worth of dough. For a 7 minute bake at 440°F, everything has to be pretty thin or it won’t cook all the way through. I suspect that the photo represents perhaps three biscuits (assuming that there are a dozen in a box and 1/4 lb of meat which would be 1/4 of the total and would be pretty thin if it is to cover 9″ dia and thus might make a seven minute oven time work).

   On June 16, 2020 at 3:21 am

2. 

   Reply

   Jihad Bilal says:

   You can make the dough at home and it is very easy to prepare. For the sake of time, I buy ready-made dough such as dough for pizza. You can buy such dough at Whole Foods, Trader Joe, and Middle Eastern bakery stores.

   I use lamb meat and beef meat. Lamb is expensive so most of the time I use 85%-15% ground beef. If you like juicier meat, then use 80%-20% ground beef.

   What makes the lahmajeen so good are the spices. Any Middle Eastern grocery store should have them. Typically the spices are imported from the Middle East. Mine came from Lebanon.

   I also like to make mini pies called Fatayer. They are triangular in shape filled with the goodness of the meat.

   On June 16, 2020 at 4:16 am